Pluto, the Ninth Planet

Cold and dark, but still a great vacation spot.

Ever since the early 1980's, I've been fascinated by Pluto and have been working to learn more about this little world. Every line of study is fair game and I've worked long and hard from many directions to add to our collective knowledge. The items listed below will take you to areas that I've worked on or perhaps point you to interesting information that others have come up with. If you don't see something here that you want to see explained, send me e-mail and I'll add it to the list of questions answered on these web pages.

We're going to Pluto! New Horizons was successfully launched on January 19, 2006 at 2:00pm EST. I was there to see it and it was a glorious sight. We passed Jupiter in February 2007, Saturn in June 2008, and get to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Check out this page to see where the spacecraft is now (courtesy of Daniel Muller).

Here's a copy (3.5Mb) of my public lecture at the Kennedy Space Center on January 17, 2006 that I gave just before launch.